


Served Faithfully

by Zooey_Glass



Series: Served Faithfully [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, semihomemade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-21
Updated: 2009-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zooey_Glass/pseuds/Zooey_Glass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It was the hands that made her notice him. Not just the way he stopped her refilling his glass - although that was unusual enough to give her pause - but the way he held the beer bottle, almost a caress. Another mark of the heavy drinker, normally, but this was different. It was more like he was taking the time to savor it, this small pleasure in a life that didn't see many.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Served Faithfully

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Served Faithfully' by Ani DiFranco.

She was twenty-eight the first time she met him, serving behind the bar in a spit-and-sawdust joint her daddy probably would have forbidden her to walk into, never mind work at. But her daddy wasn't in a position to have any say over her life, not any more, so she just got on with it; served up beer and whiskey to a changing succession of men, fending off lewd comments and covetous eyes with a wall of stony silence.

It was the graveyard shift, that final hour which saw no one there apart from those who had no homes to go to, or at least none they cared to see. He limped in looking like any of the other drifters and loners she saw, bruised up from a recent fight, and sat down at the bar.

'Whiskey,' he said without meeting her eyes, and she set down a bottle of beer along with the shot, not waiting to be asked.

He tossed back the liquor in the swift, urgent motion she'd come to expect from men like this, hand shaking as he set the glass back down. She filled it up and he disposed of the second shot in the same way, but when she went to tip the bottle up a third time he stopped her, hand over the glass. Not an alcoholic, then. Or at least not the hard-drinking kind, she amended. She'd been here long enough to know they came in all sorts of guises.

It was the hands that made her notice him. Not just the way he stopped her refilling his glass - although that was unusual enough to give her pause - but the way he held the beer bottle, almost a caress. Another mark of the heavy drinker, normally, but this was different. It was more like he was taking the time to savor it, this small pleasure in a life that didn't see many. They weren't beautiful hands - nails blunted and skin roughened with work, grime marked into the skin and a split along the knuckle of one thumb from some recent blow. Somehow, though, that small caress made them momentarily graceful, so he stuck in her mind.

* * *

The next time he came it was during the afternoon, when she was sweeping out the accumulated filth from the night before. He sat watching while she worked, nursing one beer for so long that she started to get a little pissed off. Guys who stuck around for too long without drinking - especially this time of day, when there wasn't even anyone much around to hustle or sponge off - were invariably trouble.

'Don't you have someplace else to be?' she snapped finally.

'No,' he said simply. 'Not just now.'

It was so calm and polite that she was thrown off balance, and she just let it drop, going back to her cleaning.

'Do you?' he asked after a long silence.

'Does it look like I do?' She was irritated again, because no one who had any choice would be working in this dive for below minimum wage and tips that came with veiled and not-so-veiled invitations and conditions.

There was another silence in response, stretching out until she realized he wasn't going to rise to the bait. She looked up reflexively to see if he was still there and caught him watching her, eyes assessing her without it being about her tits or her ass.

'Yes,' he said finally.

He stayed another hour after that, but they didn't say anything more. She mopped the floor and watched the dirty water swirl out into the dust, and thought about his answer.

* * *

She moved on not long after that, applied for a job in a realtor's office and got it, too. She told herself she was just dog-tired of the life she'd been leading, that it was time to show that she could not only survive without her family but actually have a life. That 'Yes' was in the back of her mind while she did it, though, giving her the push she needed.

She'd figured she wouldn't be seeing him again - he hadn't even been by the bar more than those two times, and now she was gone from there. That was how it went. So it was a shock when she walked out of the library - she was studying for her realtor's license - and bumped straight into him.

'Whoa, there.' He caught the book she'd dropped and handed it back to her, and it was his hands she recognized first, a thin, white line across his thumb where she'd seen a cut last time. What she hadn't noticed last time was the wedding ring, a thick band of gold glistening dully in the sun, but that wasn't her concern.

She looked up to see his face and the eyes were the same, too, assessing her blouse and neat little shoes - she'd come from work - like he was gathering information. The rest of him was different, though - smart shirt and pants instead of the beat-up jeans and jacket she'd seen him in before. It was startling enough that she didn't even think to say hi, just blurted out 'Guess we've both changed.' She gave a nervous laugh, cursing herself for it, 'cause she really was not that kind of girl.

'I guess so. Maybe I can buy you a drink?' he offered. Now that they weren't in the context of the bar, where she'd been constantly on guard against the advances of sleazy patrons, she was prepared to acknowledge the fact that he was actually pretty easy on the eye. And hell, a drink seemed like a fairly harmless proposition.

A drink turned into a few drinks, and then she kicked his ass at pool.

'You're good,' he said, looking vaguely bemused at just how easily she'd relieved him of the five dollars they'd wagered.

She laughed and said, 'You don't watch people get hustled every night for two years and not pick up a trick or two.'

'Guess not,' he said and sucked back his beer, accepting it with good grace. Like that, he was even cuter, so she relented and taught him one or two of her best moves.

After that, it seemed natural to show him a few _more_ of her moves, so they wound up back at her place. She cracked out some of her good whiskey, the bottle she normally didn't bother wasting on random hook-ups, and her opinion of him rose even higher when he showed due appreciation and didn't do anything to suggest he was assuming that being taken back to her place meant what it generally did. In fact, when she stepped things up from kissing and led him towards the bedroom, he was oddly hesitant.

'It's - uh, it's been a while.' He stayed in the doorway, and for the first time his self-assurance slipped a little.

She was about to make a flippant remark, and then she caught the look in his eyes, the one that said there was a story behind that. She could recognize grief when she saw it - god knew she'd seen enough of it - so she just stripped off her blouse and skirt, giving him a moment. There was that wedding band, after all, and he didn't strike her as the kind of man to cheat.

'You've gotta try again sometime,' she said once she was naked, more gently than she might have.

He gave an embarrassed smile, but he crossed the threshold and came towards her.

Half an hour later, he had his mouth on her and she was gasping out, 'You haven't forgotten what to do.'

He curled up to sleep beside her afterwards - another thing she wasn't really expecting - but woke her early in the morning, when the sun was still just a smudge of grey across the sky.

'I've got somewhere I have to be,' he said, and kissed her goodbye. She watched him go from the window, noted the Kansas plates on his car, and figured he really wouldn't be back her way again.

* * *

He did come back, though - never more often than once a month or so, and never staying for more than a day. At first he just waited around in town till he bumped into her, but eventually she snapped at him that that was dumb, he knew where she lived, and after that he came to the house.

There didn't seem to be much consistency to his visits, not in the matter of timing, nor in anything else, either. Sometimes he'd be dressed smart, other times he'd be covered in dirt, holes torn in his jeans. One time he even turned up in what she was pretty sure was most of a Virginia State Trooper's uniform, along with a baseball cap concealing a badly patched scalp wound.

Asking a lot of questions wasn't her way - she had plenty of secrets of her own - but his reticence was extreme even by her standards. She asked once about his job, mostly because she'd beaten her brain for weeks trying to figure it out from the few clues she got just by watching him.

'This and that,' he said. 'I'm on the road a lot.'

The way he said it made it clear that more questions weren't an option, so she let it go.

He did her the courtesy of being equally restrained about prying into her business. Funny thing was, that made her more ready to tell him. There was something about his silence that made her want to fill it, and gradually she found she'd told him more about her life than she had just about anyone else. He never said much in response, and maybe that encouraged her, too - she'd never been one for platitudes.

Despite his taciturnity, she did grow to know him, as months and then years passed by and he kept up the occasional visits. First of all it was just the various small hints she could pick up by watching him - that wedding band, which he never took off, even in the shower; the grief that was always at the back of his eyes, no matter how much they were laughing and joking. As she grew to know him better, he started to let more slip about himself, although she always knew it wasn't even a quarter of the truth. That was okay, though. He never lied to her.

* * *

They were talking one evening, drinking iced tea out in the dusty yard, and she watched him twist his wedding ring absentmindedly round and round.

'What was her name?' she asked suddenly.

His hand stilled. 'Mary.'

They sat in silence for a good hour, and then he cleared his throat. 'She's dead. Nearly four years, now.'

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'How -?'

'Fire.' He looked as if he wanted to say more, but that was all.

She wondered, but she never asked again. He'd tell her in his own time.

* * *

From time to time he'd turn up when she was dating another guy. He never made an issue of it, just backed off without demanding anything. Oftentimes he'd even stick around a few hours or a night anyway, share a meal and a drink before he headed back out on the road.

Five years in, he knocked on her door after a longer-than-usual gap. She answered wearily, too tired to care that she hadn't washed her hair in two days and milk was staining the front of the t-shirt she'd been wearing for as long.

He took those details in at a glance, eyes widening in surprise. 'I'm sorry, do you want me to go?'

She shrugged. 'There's no husband in the picture, if that's what you're asking.'

She hadn't expected him to stay – she guessed they were friends by now, but she was hardly appealing company right then – but he heaved a worn duffel over his shoulder and followed her back into the house.

When they reached the lounge he went straight to the bassinet. He stood there for a long time, looking down at her sleeping son.

'He's not yours,' she said, because the truth was the dates were near enough that he had cause to wonder.

'I know that.' He turned back and smiled at her. 'Looks nothing like my boys did.'

'You have kids?' The thought occurred too late that they might have been lost in the same fire that had killed his wife.

'Two boys.' He smiled again, and okay, thank god, they were still alive. He rummaged in his bag and pulled out the battered leather journal she'd seen him write in from time to time.

'Here.' The photo had been carefully slipped in between the pages of the journal: a fierce-eyed little boy holding onto the hand of a younger kid, who smiled up at him in obvious hero-worship. 'Dean's eleven, Sammy's just shy of seven.'

'They're beautiful kids,' she said, and meant it. 'You must be proud.'

'I am.' He looked around the room, taking in the chaos of scattered breast pads and soiled onesies. 'Get some sleep. I'll keep watch on -?'

'Jack.' It seemed like she should protest that it was too much, him helping her like this, but she was too damn tired.

'I'll keep watch on Jack, then.'

He brought Jack through a few times in the night for her to feed, took him away again when she was done. When she woke up, the house was tidy, and he was holding Jack on his shoulder, humming to him quietly.

She let out a soft sigh at the sight, and he looked up.

'Listen,' he said seriously. 'This is gonna sound crazy, but… I laid some salt around the doors and windows. It's in the sills, so it won't be in the way, but keep it there, okay?'

Crazy was right, she thought, but it was clear he was sincere.

'Okay,' she said finally, and he gave a relieved little sigh, one hand spread protectively out to hold her son's head.

Maybe they really were friends.

* * *

Three years later he turned up bleeding, a nasty gash in his arm that looked like it had been made by claws.

'Sorry – this was the closest place – wasn't…' He passed out before he could finish the sentence.

Jack looked on with calm fascination while she cleaned the wound up and checked for any others. There were none, although the gash was bad enough that she thought about taking him to the hospital. But if he'd wanted a hospital he could have just as easily driven there, so she figured she'd leave him be.

The gun and the knife he had holstered, though, those gave her pause. She'd figured out long ago that whatever it was he did, it wasn't exactly safe, or legal. But it was different to actually see that long, nasty blade – dulled with use – right there in front of her baby son.

When he came round his hand went automatically to the place where his gun had been.

'Care to explain?' She'd locked both weapons in her bureau, where Jack couldn't get at them.

His eyes flickered around the room – looking for an escape route, or maybe just checking they were alone, she wasn't sure. Finally he met her gaze. 'Some things are too complicated to explain.'

'Complicated like claw wound complicated? Like salt across the doors and windows complicated?' For the first time she felt angry. 'Complicated like there are things we're all better off not knowing about, things that need to be hunted and killed with silver bullets?'

The look on his face turned from evasive to shocked.

'I'm not blind, John.' She picked Jack up, heaved him onto her hip. 'I've known you these eight years, you think I haven't noticed your life's stranger than most? That's your business. But you come here where my son is, bleeding, looking like the hounds of hell are after you – that's my business.'

He looked chastened. 'You're right, I'm sorry. I don't think there's anything following me – it was a chupacabra, but I killed it, and they don't usually run in packs.'

'Right then.' Jack squirmed, sensing that she was no longer as tense as she had been, and she set him back down. 'We'd better get some food in you, make up for that blood loss, don't you think? And then you can tell me the whole story.'

* * *

From time to time after he'd told her the truth, he would turn up injured, or come by with some symbol or amulet he wanted her to put on the house – for protection, he said, and she'd seen enough by then for that not to seem crazy. She urged him to bring his boys by sometime, but he just shook his head, looking uncomfortable. Whatever it was that he found in her, it was something he couldn't let them see.

Eventually she married, and he took that in his stride like everything else. There was no more sex – she wasn't that kind of woman, despite what her daddy had said all those years before – but they'd come to the point that they didn't need that any more. The first time he met her husband, she was afraid Lou might take him the wrong way, but somehow it was never a problem.

As the years went by, though, his visits got fewer and further between. Occasionally he'd write, postcards from almost every state, and she figured he was wandering further afield as his boys got bigger. She worried sometimes about what might happen to him, doing what it was he was doing. When she compared him to the other friends she'd acquired over the years, though, and thought of the thousand little things that could grind a person down... Well, she guessed she had no more cause to worry about him than anyone else.

He turned up again not long after Lou left her, and for the first time she let herself regret that he would never stay more than a day or so. He held her while she cried over the end of her marriage and then fucked her slowly, consolingly. He still left, though, and while she cursed him when he refused to stay a little longer, she couldn't hate him for it. Maybe if they'd met under other circumstances they could have had something more, but he still wore his wedding band after all those years.

The next time he came she greeted him with a light heart, welcomed him into her bed and watched without a word as he left again.

She figured they had something more than a lot of people ever got, after all.

* * *

'Shell Allen?' The two men standing on her doorstep had a dangerous edge she recognized from her bartending days, a look she hadn't seen in a good long while.

She looked reflexively towards Jack's room, before remembering that he wasn't there any more, was away at college, across state. Then she looked back at the two men and saw the dark eyes of the taller one, the long, curling eyelashes of the shorter. And their hands – weapon-calloused and steady-looking, two quite different sets of hands that nevertheless tipped her to who they were.

'Dean and Sam?' She remembered that photo from years back and marveled at the fact that the tall man before her must have been that chubby little boy. Dean didn't look so different – same cropped hair, protective stance next to his brother.

'Is your dad in town?' Her heart sank as she registered the looks on their faces. 'Is he – he's okay, right?' She already knew the answer: he never would have sent them alone if he could have come with them.

'No, um, I'm sorry…' The rest of the words faded into the background as she felt the grief seize her, tears welling up silently.

Dean put his hands on her shoulders and held on while she cried it out. That was his father, too, the physical gesture saying more than words would have. She could feel the tension of his own emotion under the surface, and when she stepped back and wiped her eyes he kept his face averted, obviously getting himself under control.

'I guess some freaky thing got him in the end, huh?' She led the way into the house, trying to get it together, because whatever she had shared with him, she knew how he'd felt about his sons, how they must feel about him.

'The demon, yeah.' Sam registered the uncomprehending look on her face. 'You didn't know about the demon? The one that killed our mom?'

'No.' She almost felt the need to apologize, because it was clear that she was letting them down in some way by saying this. 'I knew that there _were_ demons, but he never told me he'd figured out exactly what it was that killed Mary.'

Another stab of grief on both their faces. However little they'd known their mother, it was evident that they still missed her.

'We found your name and address in Dad's journal,' Sam explained. 'We thought – he'd been doing research – we thought maybe you might have known something more about the stuff he'd discovered.'

'Sorry,' she said. 'He never really involved me… I'm not a hunter.'

Both boys were looking at her bleakly, and she wished she could give them something, anything. Time was, she would have been happy to take them both as her own.

She remembered it then, the photo John had given her once. He'd been on his way to a more than usually dangerous job, and he'd taken it out of his journal.

'I haven't got many,' he'd said. 'Keep this safe: if anything happens I want my boys to have it.'

He'd come back safe from that job, but he hadn't taken the photo back, and it had felt like another bond between them - a way of paying him back for all he'd done for her - so she'd kept it safe all these years.

The photo was right at the bottom of her box, buried under pictures and keepsakes of Jack – his baby teeth, his first shoe. She pulled it out carefully and handed it to Dean.

'I remember this,' he said in a flat voice, one that spoke of more emotion than he could possibly risk expressing. 'It was Fourth of July. There were firecrackers, they made Sammy cry.'

Sam took it gently from his hand.

'It's all of us,' he said wonderingly. He caught hold of her hand for a moment, squeezing it tight. 'Thank you.'

'How come we never knew about you?' Dean said suddenly, accusingly.

She'd wondered about that herself, but she guessed she could understand it.

'He loved your mom.' She held Dean's gaze. 'He loved you boys too. I think he had to keep this to himself.'

It wasn't any kind of answer, but they both nodded.

'Yeah,' Dean said, and that was it, they were turning to go.

'Wait,' she said. 'At least let me give you a meal.'

She talked feverishly all through the time it took them to eat. They both sat quietly for the most part, asking few questions but listening intently. She wasn't sure they'd ever find it in themselves to come back, but she felt she owed it to them to give them back part of what they'd lost, all the bits of their father they'd never had a chance to know.

When they finally left, Sam engulfed her hand in his huge one. 'Thank you.'

She watched them go, dry-eyed, then went back into the house and poured herself a whiskey.

She was forty-eight years old and she'd never see him again.


End file.
